2022 Focus
This year my inquiry focus continues to look at reading and raising reading achievement. This year I have identified my target group as those students who are reading between the ages of 8-9 years. This group of learners are either currently considered to be at where they should be or just below. I have found looking at previous years data of my own there tends to be a group of students who finish year 5 and are still reading at this level when moving to year 6 and they almost seem "stuck" (for lack of a better word) at these levels. This year I would like to try and find out why this is and what I can do as a teacher to help my learners make this shift before falling behind as they go up the school.
Hunches
I have been thinking about this for a little while now and with some discussion with some of my other colleagues these are some of the hunches that I have so far that I will need to look into:
- Students are having to pass 2 reading tests (levels) in order to make it to the next year bracket in reading. I have noticed that some of my students may pass one of the levels but stay reading at the same age and then seem to get stuck getting to that next level.
- The questions to pass are increased at this level of text, applied knowing and inferencing becomes a big part of being able to pass the text. They now need to pass at least 6 of the 8 questions rather than 4 of the 6 questions in previous texts.
- Vocabulary and inferencing are areas that need work. Looking at the test data and what areas the students are needing work on these are gaps and struggles with inferencing and understanding what the vocabulary means in different contexts.
Kia ora Kelsey
ReplyDeleteI have been reading with interest, your look into the reading data of students aged 8-9 in your classroom that seem to be at a “stuck” point. As a research team we have recently been looking into the progression of inference as a skill across curriculum levels, both in the NZC and the LLPs. I am doing further inquiry myself into our development of a matrix that describes these changes. As you point out, it is vital that we look to where students need to be and then backwards map a path to the more ambitious outcomes. What I have observed is that ‘inference’, as a skill, is conceptually rather under-described in practice, particularly in terms of what it might ‘look like’ as student readers become more capable? Arguably, as Aaron Wilson and Selena Meiklejohn-Whiu point out, inference is not a ‘strategy’, as is often framed, but actually “synonymous with comprehension: we use strategies to make inferences”. Also, as readers we are constantly constructing a representation of the words, ideas and interrelationships between these (whilst integrating what we know) to construct a satisfactory, accurate interpretation of what the text says. Therefore, as you point out, as students encounter more sophisticated texts, they are required to do more complex gap-filling and co-ordination of these elaborations. They are indeed having to therefore engage in more complex internal dialogue.
With the above in mind, I am wondering whether we make some of these inferencing processes explicit enough for students? I also wonder whether helping them get a closer ‘look’ (e.g. deconstructing) textual inferences (local and global) would give them greater understanding (and appreciation) of inferencing and its importance in being a good reader?
Our team are starting to develop levelled criteria, practice activities, and graphic organisers that support a “thinking aloud” approach to inferencing instruction. If you are interested we could do a bit of a collaboration or get together to share both your progress and our learnings so far? It could be mutually beneficial and I would be keen to get your ‘eyes on’ some of our activities.
All the best with your inquiry!
Nga mihi nui
Naomi